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Jack Brooks, Former Texas Congressman, Dies at 89

Jack Brooks in 1974. As a ranking member of the House judiciary committee, he helped draft the articles of impeachment that prompted President Nixon to resign.Credit
Mike Lien/The New York Times

Jack Brooks, an irascible, cigar-chomping former Texas congressman who over 42 years defied fellow Southerners to support civil rights, investigated abuses by Presidents Nixon and Reagan and repeatedly attacked government waste, down to the cost of wrenches, died on Tuesday night in Beaumont, Tex. He was 89.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department confirmed his death.

Mr. Brooks rose in Congress under the tutelage of two revered Texas Democrats, Speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, both as a senator and as president, and became a swashbuckling Texas character in his own right. His politics were pro-labor, pro-gun, fiercely partisan and boldly unapologetic, particularly when it came to funneling federal funds to his East Texas district.

He played a supporting role in one of the most famous news photographs of the 20th century, that of Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One in Dallas after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Mr. Brooks, who had been in the presidential motorcade, stands behind Jacqueline Kennedy.

He had run Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in his district, where Kennedy won by 40,000 votes. In October 1963, he was the only one of nine Southerners on the judiciary committee to vote for the Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill.

President Richard M. Nixon, he loathed. Mr. Brooks said he would have voted to impeach him on Jan. 21, 1969, but it “would not have looked good” to do it the day he was inaugurated, Jan. 20. Five and a half years later, as a ranking member of the judiciary committee, he helped draft the articles of impeachment that prompted Nixon to resign.

He was also a leader in the House investigation of President Ronald Reagan for trading arms for the hostages in Iran and using the proceeds to finance the right-leaning contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Mr. Brooks’s accomplishments included working to pass laws to revamp government procurement and to require federal agencies to have inspectors general. But he attracted more notice with his highly publicized investigations of the life of light bulbs, the number of coats of paint used on government buildings and airline pilots who let flight attendants fly jetliners.

Photo

Representative Jack Brooks, far right, looks on as Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as president in the cabin of Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.Credit
Cecil Stoughton/White House, via Associated Press

His sharp edge showed in an unsuccessful effort to impeach Reagan, not to mention in his refusal to allow Republicans at luncheons of the Texas Congressional caucus. He ostentatiously puffed his cigars in nonsmoking areas.

Mr. Brooks pulled no punches. After John M. Poindexter, Reagan’s national security adviser, and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams testified to the judiciary committee about the Iran-contra affair, Mr. Brooks called each “a lying son of a bitch.”

An aide to Johnson called Mr. Brooks “one of the few men L.B.J. was ever afraid of,” while Nixon labeled him “the executioner.” Mr. Brooks nurtured a coalition of minority members, labor unions, abortion rights activists and loyal Democrats to win 21 straight Congressional elections. His defeat in the Republican Congressional landslide of 1994 reflected the long, steady rise of well-financed Republicans and anti-abortion organizers, as well as the defection of the Teamsters and some public employees unions.

The most proximate cause of his defeat was his antagonizing of the gun lobby by voting for a crime bill that included a ban on 19 firearms as assault weapons. Mr. Brooks had fought vainly to remove the ban, but ultimately voted for the bill approved by the Judiciary Committee, which he led.

This left a gaping opening for his Republican opponent, Steve Stockman, a 37-year-old accountant making a third try for the seat.

“The problem that Brooks did was paint himself into a corner, quite frankly,” Mr. Stockman told The Washington Post after the election. “He sent letters saying, ‘I will do anything to stop the gun ban.’

“And he also said, ‘You need to keep me in office because I’m powerful.’ Well, you’re either powerful enough to stop the gun ban or you’re not. He set himself up as a giant and he couldn’t deliver.”

Jack Bascom Brooks was born in Crowley, La., on Dec. 18, 1922, and his family moved to Beaumont, Tex., when he was 5. His father, a rice salesman, died when Jack was 13, and the young man took a variety of jobs, including as a car hop, a grocery clerk and a newspaper reporter.

Photo

Representative Jack Brooks in 1993. He spent more than four decades in the House.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

He received a scholarship to attend Lamar Junior College in Beaumont, where he completed two years of college. He moved on to the University of Texas and earned a journalism degree. He joined the Marines as a private in World War II, and fought in Guadalcanal, Guam, Okinawa and North China. He was discharged as a first lieutenant, and was a colonel in the Marine Corps reserve until 1972.

In 1946, when he was 23, Mr. Brooks was elected to represent Jefferson County in the Texas House of Representatives. An early victory was passing a law to make what is now Lamar University a four-year college. While a legislator, he earned a law degree from the University of Texas.

After four years as a state legislator, Mr. Brooks was elected to Congress, defeating 11 Democrats in the primary. He entered the House in 1953 as the youngest member of that year’s freshman class. He left four decades later as the most senior representative ever to have lost a general election.

He nestled under the protective wing of Speaker Rayburn, who invited him to stop by every day. “It was like being given a Ph.D. on how to run the place,” Mr. Brooks told The Houston Chronicle in 1995.

Mr. Rayburn put Mr. Brooks on the Judiciary Committee in 1955, and he served there until 1995, the last six as chairman. From 1975 to 1988, he was chairman of the Government Operations Committee, which oversees regulatory agencies.

Survivors include Mr. Brooks’s wife, the former Charlotte Collins; two daughters, Kate Brooks Carroll and Kim Brooks; a son, Jeb; and two grandchildren.

As Johnson was close to Mr. Rayburn, so Mr. Brooks was to the president. He and his wife dined at the White House as many as two or three times a week. Johnson let him use the White House bowling alley when he was not there.

Some observers wondered why such a long-serving representative did not rise to top leadership or enact more laws. But nobody questioned his ability to look after his district. In the crime bill that helped spell his defeat, Mr. Brooks tried to include $10 million for construction of a criminal justice center at Lamar University.

“If it’s pork,” he said in an interview , “it’ll be tasty.”

Correction: December 15, 2012

An obituary on Dec. 6 about Jack Brooks, the former Texas congressman, misidentified the county he was elected to represent in the Texas House of Representatives in 1946. It was Jefferson County, not Washington County.

A version of this article appears in print on December 6, 2012, on page A33 of the New York edition with the headline: Jack Brooks, 89, Lawmaker Who Bucked Fellow Southerners on Civil Rights, Dies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe